Apple Malware

Apple's software is Malware (malicious software).

Apple is a company that thwarts technological advances.

Apple is a tax evading corporation seemingly untouchable by the Australian government.

We do not recommend the purchase or use of Apple products.

If you are using Apple products, here are some reasons not to, as documented by stallman.org under the headline;

Reasons not to use Apple

Censorship
Spying
Worker abuse
Right to repair
Tax avoidance
Other reasons

Censorship

• Apple used its censorship system to enforce China's censorship by blocking distribution of the New York Times app.
  More about Apple's censorship of apps and other malicious functionalities in Apple software.
  
• Apple appears to be censoring all bitcoin apps for iThings.
  It should be illegal to make or distribute computers which are platforms for censorship.
  
• Apple demonstrates the arbitrariness of its censorship by blocking an app that tells people with text messages when US drone attacks kill civilians.
  The author said that this app was meant to raise awareness. I hope Apple's censorship of it raises awareness.
  
• Apple censors information about abortion providers.
• As of 2015, Apple systematically bans apps that endorse abortion rights or would help women find abortions. This particular political slant affects other Apple services.
• Apple's mail service silently censors the mail people send.
• Apple deauthorized a Wikileaks access application, using censorship to support censorship.
• Apple censors iTunes ebooks — banning all mention of Amazon.
  People should not do business with Amazon, which mistreats authors, publishers, its workers, and its customers. Ms Lisle's presupposition that the goal of success is all that matters is not admirable.
  However, that doesn't justify Apple's censorship.
  Of course, publishing in iTunes was already bad for other reasons, such as DRM, and requiring users to use nonfree software.
  
• Apple banned from iTunes the erotic novel, The Proof of the Honey, saying it was because of the cover.
• Apple censored a game for the iThings called Angry Syrians, which is a political parody of Angry Birds.
  Apple said it was "defamatory or offensive" — to the dictator Assad, apparently.
• Apple cut off access to the app store for Iranian users of iMonsters.
  The underlying wrong here is that Apple gave itself censorship power over everyone that uses those computers — power that we should not allow anyone to have.
  

Spying

Apple spies on its users, and helps others spy on them.

• If you carry a cell phone, it tells Big Brother where you are. Apple wants to hand out the information too.
  Using the lever of "You have a choice, but unless you say yes, your old activities will stop working" is something that Apple has done before, with malicious "upgrades". Apple ostensibly doesn't force people to accept the new nasty thing; it just punishes them if they don't.
  
• Apple left a security hole in iTunes unfixed for 3 years after being informed about the problem. During that time, governments used that security hole to invade people's computers.
  
• Apple's Capitulation to China's VPN Crack-Down Will Return to Haunt it at Home.
• Apple has outsourced its user data storage in China to a company controlled by the Communist Party of the province of Guizhou

Worker abuse

• Apple persists in disregarding the widespread blatant abuse of the workers that build its products.
• In 2015, the workers making Apple products in China are still mistreated.
• Apple uses sweatshops in China to build its products.
• Sweatshops are good for Foxconn (and for Apple), but not for workers.
• An undercover journalist reports on the horrible conditions in the Foxconn factory that makes iThings: still horrible in 2012.
• Foxconn closed schools and forced the students to work building iThings.
• Working conditions at Apple's other Chinese suppliers are even worse than in Foxconn.
• Today's Apple Pegatron sweatshops are even nastier than the Foxconn sweatshops it used before. Just because you're not pregnant, should that make it ok to require you to work 11 hours a day, 6 days a week? Apple is culpable if its products are made by people working a longer workweek than is allowed in the US.
  
• Mistreatment of workers making Apple computers continues in 2014. This is a general injustice, and will continue until the "brand" companies are made legally responsible for treatment of the workers that do their work, just as if they were direct employees of those companies. But that doesn't excuse Apple.

Tax avoidance

Apple practices tax avoidance using loopholes and lobbying.

• Apple pioneered techniques for avoiding the US corporate tax (even though it is far too low) in order to pay next to no tax.
  The loopholes that Apple uses would be closed, if not for the political power of business. "Free trade" treaties give business increased power to block such changes, so we must abolish them to break business's power.
• The Apple CEO met with the troll and said: "Tim Cook from Apple, I'm here to talk to the President-elect about the things we can do to help you achieve your stated goal."
  This text was transcribed from a video recording. I can't offer a reference because the web site requires nonfree Javascript code.
  Cook was angling for a big tax cut for multinational businesses.
• Apple Avoided $40 Billion in Taxes (by lobbying for a tax cut). Now It Wants a Gold Star?
  

Right to repair

• Apple Is Lobbying Against Your Right to Repair iPhones, New York State Records Confirm.
• Apple forbids recyclers of Apple computers from extracting any usable spare parts from them, by imposing nasty contracts.
  Apple's conduct should be forbidden by law so that no company can ever do this.
  
• The iPhone 7 has DRM specifically to brick it if anyone other than an authorized repair agent fixes it.
  The term "lock" is inadequate to describe this sort of malware. Let's use other words that show what's really going on.
  
• Apple faces trial in Australia for bricking devices because they had had an "unauthorized" repair.
  
• Apple machines are built with unusual screws that make it difficult for the owner to take them apart.
  Along with technical barriers, Apple lobbies against "right to repair" laws.
  
• Apple is campaigning against right-to-repair laws that weaken the unjust effect of the DMCA.

Other reasons

• Apple iThings pioneered a new level of restricting the users: they were the first general purpose computers to impose censorship over what programs the user can install. Apple practices Digital Restrictions Management in many other ways too.
  
• Ebooks with DRM won't work on an iThing that is jailbroken, due to intentional sabotage by Apple.
  E-books with digital handcuffs are products designed to attack your freedom, much like the iThing itself.
  
• Apple doesn't trust, or respect, those who use its products.
• Apple exploits the app developers mercilessly, aside from a few stars whose role is to give a misleading impression of what developers can expect.
  I can't sympathize much with those app developers, since they are making proprietary software. They all deserve to fail. However, that doesn't excuse the way Apple treats them.
  
• Apple lures people into the business of developing apps with visions of the great wealth that a few of them get. Most just fail, often losing a substantial investment.
  Anyone who intentionally develops proprietary software (i.e., does not respect users' freedom) deserves no sympathy, but that doesn't excuse Apple for luring people into it. Some of them would not have tried to develop proprietary software if not for Apple.
  
• Apple is a major patent aggressor. Here's a rather absurd patent that Apple will surely use against other mobile computers. This joins many other patents which Apple is already using to attack free software.
• Lots of iThing users complained that they did not want the U2 album "gift" that Apple stuck them with — and that it was hard to delete.
  These complaints focus on a superficial problem, reflecting the shallow thinking that Apple instills in its users. Ironically, though, this superficial problem reflects a much deeper problem that the complainers have failed to notice: the unjust power that Apple has imposed on whoever uses an iThing or iTunes.
  
• Apple turns a blind eye to environment in China.
  Although Apple has joined EPEAT again, it does not cover the iThings — only the Macintosh.
  
• Apple practices planned obsolescence for the iBad — in just two years.
• Apple store staff are taught twisted psychological manipulation.
  The mere practice of referring to service staff as "geniuses" is dishonest already.
  
• Apple devices lock users in solely to Apple services by being incompatible with all other options, ethical or inethical.
  

Copyright (c) 2012-2018 Richard Stallman Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Australian Government forcing you online

Once choices are removed you are no longer living in a democracy but rather a totalitarian state.

The people in the Australian Government (herein referred to as the ‘administration’) are removing options for the general population in the way they are able to conduct their business.

As an example the late Department of Social Security, now a business called Centrelink has removed from its website the rental assistance form, therefore making it difficult for people to obtain, where they must physically attend an office to obtain such a form.

This may not be a practical or even possible scenario for many disadvantaged people.

The rental assistance form known as the Centrelink Rent Certificate for (SU523) is available for download at:

http://corpau.blogspot.com.au/2014/08/centrelink-rent-certificate-form-su523.html

With the recent very public affair regarding Facebook’s so called ‘data breach’, which in reality is part of their internal business model, attention has been drawn to data collection by companies, organisations which also includes governments, as documented by Edward Snowden.

Very briefly;

Despite what governments say about data being securely stored, people should be aware that their private and personal data which is stored on hard disks on various operating system platforms is very vulnerable to exploitation.

One of the largest culprits in ‘data breaches’ is something called apps on user’s smart phones.

To make it even worse (with regards to the user’s privacy and security), the current technology in GSM ‘feature’ phones or dumb phones and smart phones is not designed for user’s privacy, but rather conversely as a surveillance device.

The current smart phone operating systems duopoly dominated by corporations Apple and Google, do not value your privacy, where data is harvested from your device and sent back to those companies, where it is later passed on to various organisations without your knowledge or consent.

In an effort to monitor and later control the people’s movements the administration will be forcing people to use ‘plastic’ rather than cash in the form of a card called Indue.

The administration is also taking away the choice for people to pay cash for their motor vehicle registration in certain branches of VicRoads.

Many other ‘government’ departments are forcing you ‘online’.

If you are told to download an app from either Apple or Google by a government department, in order to conduct business with them, where there is no paper alternative, you are being forced by them to put your private and confidential data on your phone at risk.

By creating an app. (e.g.) Centrelink is forcing you to conduct business with either Apple or Google, where in reality the same task can be undertaken within the website, therefore being independent of your device’s operating system. 

There is no legitimate reason for apps of this calibre to exist.

Officeworks does not value your privacy

Officeworks is another 'data collection' company.

What they do with 'your' data is something you have no idea about.

The screen capture below is taken from a standard configured Internet browser, where when you type in the address to the officeworks website, you obtain the address you requested.

When you type in the same address into another browser that is configured to protect your privacy, then the Internet address you asked for does not appear, but your browser is redirected to another website that looks like it has ties to Amazon, where an Officeworks looking website is displayed informing the user of an 'error'.

There is no factual 'error' but rather misleading information supplied to the user.

We do not recommend purchasing from Officeworks with a credit card nor giving them your email address so that they can send you your receipt via email.

Microsoft Malware

Microsoft's Windows operating system is literally malware (malicious software) and has been so for quite some time at least 'officially' since Vista, even though malicious code was injected into the operating system even earlier than Windows 2000.

For those who 'just' surf the Internet and use their personal computer for basic word processing spread sheet, presentation or multimedia purposes, there is no legitimate reason to have this operating system on a personal computer, where there are many other (mature, stable and less intrusive) options available to the general public.

See article from gnu.org of the headline:


Microsoft's Software is Malware

Other examples of proprietary malware

 
Malware means software designed to function in ways that mistreat or harm the user. (This does not include accidental errors.) This page explains how Microsoft software is malware.

Malware and nonfree software are two different issues. The difference between free software and nonfree software is in whether the users have control of the program or vice versa. It's not directly a question of what the program does when it runs. However, in practice nonfree software is often malware, because the developer's awareness that the users would be powerless to fix any malicious functionalities tempts the developer to impose some.

Type of malware

• Back doors
• Insecurity
• Sabotage
• Interference
• Surveillance
• Digital restrictions management or “DRM” means functionalities designed to restrict what users can do with the data in their computers.
• Jails—systems that impose censorship on application programs.
• Tyrants—systems that reject any operating system not “authorized” by the manufacturer.
• Subscriptions

Microsoft Back Doors

• Microsoft has already backdoored its disk encryption.
• Microsoft Windows has a universal back door through which any change whatsoever can be imposed on the users.
  More information on when this was used.
  In Windows 10, the universal back door is no longer hidden; all “upgrades” will be forcibly and immediately imposed.
• Windows 8 also has a back door for remotely deleting apps.
  You might well decide to let a security service that you trust remotely deactivate programs that it considers malicious. But there is no excuse for deleting the programs, and you should have the right to decide who (if anyone) to trust in this way.
• German government veers away from Windows 8 computers with TPM 2.0 due to potential back door capabilities of the TPM 2.0 chip.
  
• Users reported that Microsoft was forcing them to replace Windows 7 and 8 with all-spying Windows 10.
  Microsoft was in fact attacking computers that run Windows 7 and 8, switching on a flag that said whether to “upgrade” to Windows 10 when users had turned it off.
  Later on, Microsoft published instructions on how to permanently reject the downgrade to Windows 10.
  This seems to involve use of a back door in Windows 7 and 8.
  

Microsoft Insecurity

These bugs are/were not intentional, so unlike the rest of the file they do not count as malware. We mention them to refute the supposition that prestigious proprietary software doesn't have grave bugs.

• Exploits of bugs in Windows, which were developed by the NSA and then leaked by the Shadowbrokers group, are now being used to attack a great number of Windows computers with ransomware.
  
• A flaw in Internet Explorer and Edge allows an attacker to retrieve Microsoft account credentials, if the user is tricked into visiting a malicious link.
  
• Point-of-sale terminals running Windows were taken over and turned into a botnet for the purpose of collecting customers' credit card numbers.
  

Microsoft Sabotage

The wrongs in this section are not precisely malware, since they do not involve making the program that runs in a way that hurts the user. But they are a lot like malware, since they are technical Microsoft actions that harm to the users of specific Microsoft software.

• Microsoft has dropped support for Windows 7 and 8 on recent processors in a big hurry.
  It makes no difference what legitimate reasons Microsoft might have for not doing work to support them. If it doesn't want to do this work, it should let users do the work.
  
• Microsoft has made Windows 7 and 8 cease to function on certain new computers, effectively forcing their owners to switch to Windows 10.
  
• Once Microsoft has tricked a user into accepting installation of Windows 10, they find that they are denied the option to cancel or even postpone the imposed date of installation.
  This demonstrates what we've said for years: using proprietary software means letting someone have power over you, and you're going to get screwed sooner or later.
• Microsoft has desupported all future Intel CPUs for Windows 7 and 8. Those machines will be stuck with the nastier Windows 10. AMD and Qualcomm CPUs, too.
  Of course, Windows 7 and 8 are unethical too, because they are proprietary software. But this example of Microsoft's wielding its power demonstrates the power it holds.
  Free software developers also stop maintaining old versions of their programs, but this is not unfair to users because the users of free software have control over it. If it is important enough to you, you and other users can hire someone to support the old version on your future platforms.
• Microsoft is forcibly pushing Windows update to its version 10, ignoring the flag on Windows 7 or 8 that you could set to not upgrade. This reaffirms the presence of a universal back door in Windows 7 and 8.
• Windows 10 “upgrades” delete applications without asking permission.
• Microsoft is repeatedly nagging many users to install Windows 10.
• Microsoft was for months tricking users into “upgrading” to Windows 10, if they failed to notice and say no.
• Microsoft informs the NSA of bugs in Windows before fixing them.
• Microsoft cut off security fixes for Windows XP, except to some big users that pay exorbitantly.
  Microsoft is going to cut off support for some Internet Explorer versions in the same way.
  A person or company has the right to cease to work on a particular program; the wrong here is Microsoft does this after having made the users dependent on Microsoft, because they are not free to ask anyone else to work on the program for them.

Microsoft Interference

Various proprietary programs often mess up the user's system. They are like sabotage, but they are not grave enough to qualify for the word “sabotage”. Nonetheless, they are nasty and wrong. This section describes examples of Microsoft committing interference.

• Microsoft is planning to make Windows impose use of its browser, Edge, in certain circumstances.
  The reason Microsoft can force things on users is that Windows is nonfree.
• Windows displays intrusive ads for Microsoft products and its partners' products.
  The article's author starts from the premise that Microsoft has a right to control what Windows does to users, as long as it doesn't go “too far”. We disagree.
• Microsoft inserts annoying advertisements inside of the File Explorer to nag users to buy subscriptions for the OneDrive service.
• In order to increase Windows 10's install base, Microsoft blatantly disregards user choice and privacy.
• Microsoft has started nagging users obnoxiously and repeatedly to install Windows 10.
• Microsoft is tricking users into replacing Windows 7 with Windows 10.
• Microsoft has made companies' Windows machines managed by the company's sysadmins harangue users to complain to the sysadmins about not “upgrading” to Windows 10.

Microsoft Surveillance

• Windows 10 telemetry program sends information to Microsoft about the user's computer and their use of the computer.
  Furthermore, for users who installed the fourth stable build of Windows 10, called the “Creators Update,” Windows maximized the surveillance by force setting the telemetry mode to “Full”.
  The “Full” telemetry mode allows Microsoft Windows engineers to access, among other things, registry keys which can contain sensitive information like administrator's login password.
• Windows DRM files can be used to identify people browsing through Tor. The vulnerability exists only if you use Windows.
• By default, Windows 10 sends debugging information to Microsoft, including core dumps. Microsoft now distributes them to another company.
• It appears Windows 10 sends data to Microsoft about what applications are running.
• A downgrade to Windows 10 deleted surveillance-detection applications. Then another downgrade inserted a general spying program. Users noticed this and complained, so Microsoft renamed it to give users the impression it was gone.
  To use proprietary software is to invite such treatment.
• Windows 10 comes with 13 screens of snooping options, all enabled by default, and turning them off would be daunting to most users.
• Windows 10 ships with default settings that show no regard for the privacy of its users, giving Microsoft the “right” to snoop on the users' files, text input, voice input, location info, contacts, calendar records and web browsing history, as well as automatically connecting the machines to open hotspots and showing targeted ads.
  We can suppose Microsoft look at users' files for the US government on demand, though the “privacy policy” does not explicit say so. Will it look at users' files for the Chinese government on demand?
• Windows 10 sends identifiable information to Microsoft, even if a user turns off its Bing search and Cortana features, and activates the privacy-protection settings.
• The unique “advertising ID” for each user enables other companies to track the browsing of each specific user.
• Spyware in Windows 8: Windows Update snoops on the user. Windows 8.1 snoops on local searches. And there's a secret NSA key in Windows, whose functions we don't know.
• Microsoft SkyDrive allows the NSA to directly examine users' data.
  
• Spyware in Skype: http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/06/20/project-chess-how-u-s-snoops-on-your-skype/. Microsoft changed Skype specifically for spying.
  
• Microsoft uses Windows 10's “privacy policy” to overtly impose a “right” to look at users' files at any time. Windows 10 full disk encryption gives Microsoft a key.
  Thus, Windows is overt malware in regard to surveillance, as in other issues.
  We can suppose Microsoft look at users' files for the US government on demand, though the “privacy policy” does not explicit say so. Will it look at users' files for the Chinese government on demand?
  The unique “advertising ID” for each user enables other companies to track the browsing of each specific user.
  It's as if Microsoft has deliberately chosen to make Windows 10 maximally evil on every dimension; to make a grab for total power over anyone that doesn't drop Windows now.

Microsoft DRM

• DRM (digital restrictions mechanisms) in Windows, introduced to cater to Bluray disks. (The article also talks about how the same malware would later be introduced in MacOS.)

Microsoft Jails

• Windows 10 S ought to be called Windows 10 J, for “Jail”: only programs from the Windows Store can be downloaded and executed.
  If the history of iOS as a jail is any indication, Windows 10 J will be no better.
  
• Windows 8 on “mobile devices” is a jail: it censors the user's choice of application programs.

Microsoft Tyrants

• Microsoft accidentally left a way for users to install GNU/Linux on Windows RT tablets, but now it has “fixed” the “error”. They have the gall to call this “protecting” the users. The article talks of installing “Linux”, but the context shows it is really GNU/Linux that users install.
  
• Mobile devices that come with Windows 8 are tyrants: they block users from installing other or modified operating systems.

Microsoft Subscriptions

• Microsoft Office forces users to subscribe to Office 360 to be able to create/edit documents.
  

As this page shows, if you do want to clean your computer of malware, the first software to delete is Windows.